Professor Who Called Trump’s Win Predicts Trump Will Be Impeached

Let me get this straight. He claims his system has correctly called every presidential election since 1984. But he predicted a win for Gore in 2000. He says that was correct since Gore won the popular vote. In 2016, he called the election for Trump. And that too is correct even though Clinton won the popular vote. Okay... Sounds like someone is "moving the goalposts" to suit their model...

I'm not sure about impeachment - but I do think that's the most likely outcome is Trump derailing his own Presidency with injudicious remarks. Bill Clinton lost two years of his legislative programme due to the furore created by a comment he made about gays in the military while out jogging at dawn.

I'd say that it's more or less inevitable that Trump is going to say something on Twitter that is going to blow up in his face in a big way. People are able to say all sorts of things when they're running for the Candidacy / Presidency (H Clinton the first time round had several such mishaps). Do that when you're President and there's a good chance you'll run out of political capital before you've managed to achieve anything meaningful.

"This one is not based on a system; it's just my gut."

Just a reporter scraping for a story.

I actually think Trump may do his best as president. He may do some really dumb things (really what president hasn't?). Unless he decides to do some really really illegal stuff, he probably won't be impeached. Let's just all hope Trump doesn't hurt us. I doubt Trump's presidency will turn out as bad as many people are predicting.

The article reports this regarding the source of the predictions:

"It's worth noting that Lichtman's predictions use very different methods than pollsters and data-based prognosticators. Some statisticians take issue with the structure of his system, a set of 13 true/false questions, saying that the binary nature of his keys leads to what's called “overfitting,” which is basically creating a system that fits the data but has little statistical significance. But Lichtman counters by saying that the system has correctly predicted every election since 1984 (specifically, his predictions have picked the next president correctly in all of those elections but 2000, when he picked Al Gore, who won the popular vote). And Lichtman has his own criticism of data-based predictions.

"“Polls are not predictors,” he said Friday in an email. “They are snapshots that simulate an election. They are abused and misused as predictors. Even the analysis of polls by Nate Silver and others which claimed a probable Clinton victory with from more than 70 percent to 99 percent certainty are mere compilations that are no better than the underlying polls.”

"And he has particular disdain for prediction systems that assign a likelihood of winning.

"“For all his acclaim, Nate Silver is only a clerk, not a scientific analyst,” Lichtman said."

There is no source for the impeachment prediction; that may be pure, but possibly well grounded, cynicism.

The "keys" on which the prediction is based can be found in: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/12/th...

When enough people are making predictions, a few are bound to be right through chance alone. The same phenomenon occurs with the stock market. The question is, how do you distinguish correct predictions made by chance from those made by correct analytical methods? This task may be as difficult as the original prediction itself.

Great, he's using his newfound fame and credibility in one area (a lucky coin toss), to make grand assertions on what Trump's presidency will be like. Where can I buy the crystal ball he is using?

I had a similar thought. The GOP establishment is clearly not happy with Trump. If given a serious enough opportunity, the GOP may be willing to impeach their own President, to replace him with Mike Pence.

The GOP electorate went 90% for Trump.

This would be asking for a coup.

But then I suppose we are at that point in the arc of Empire now.

I don't think he has much data to work off to create a model for impeachment.

Mark Blyth is a professor who predicted Brexit and Trump's victory. If you want a global perspective on these things, Mark Blyth is a very interesting person to listen to.